Step CA affected by an index out of bounds panic in TPM attestation EKU validation
Key facts
- Attack vector
- Network
- Privileges required
- None
- User interaction
- None
- Attack complexity
- High
- Impact type
- —
- Confidentiality · integrity · availability
- None · None · Low
- Fix status
- Fixed
Attack profile from CVSS 3.1 · CNA. Fix status from CNA and GitHub.
Summary
Step CA is an online certificate authority for secure, automated certificate management for DevOps. From 0.24.0 to before 0.30.0-rc3, an attacker can trigger an index out-of-bounds panic in Step CA by sending a crafted attestation key (AK) certificate with an empty Extended Key Usage (EKU) extension during TPM device attestation. When processing a device-attest-01 ACME challenge using TPM attestation, Step CA validates that the AK certificate contains the tcg-kp-AIKCertificate Extended Key Usage OID. During this validation, the EKU extension value is decoded from its ASN.1 representation and the first element is checked. A crafted certificate could include an EKU extension that decodes to an empty sequence, causing the code to panic when accessing the first element of the empty slice. This vulnerability is only reachable when a device-attest-01 ACME challenge with TPM attestation is configured. Deployments not using TPM device attestation are not affected. This vulnerability is fixed in 0.30.0-rc3.
Why it matters now
SSVC decision points
CISA ADP · SSVC 2.0.3
- Exploitation
- None
- Automatable
- No
- Technical impact
- Partial
The decision (Track, Attend, Act) also depends on your mission and well-being impact; see CISA's SSVC guide.
Affected products
| Vendor | Product | Affected versions | Fixed in | Status | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| smallstep | certificates | 0.24.0 to before 0.30.0-rc3 | 0.30.0-rc3 | Patch available | CNA |
| — | github.com/smallstep/certificates (Go) | 0.24.0 to before 0.30.0 | 0.30.0 | Patch available | GHSA-9qq8-cgcv-qmc9 |
- certificates Vendorsmallstep Affected 0.24.0 to before 0.30.0-rc3 Fixed in 0.30.0-rc3 Patch available CNA
- github.com/smallstep/certificates (Go) Vendor— Affected 0.24.0 to before 0.30.0 Fixed in 0.30.0 Patch available GHSA-9qq8-cgcv-qmc9
Remediation
- Fix · CNA certificates (smallstep) Fixed in 0.30.0-rc3
- Fix · GHSA-9qq8-cgcv-qmc9 github.com/smallstep/certificates (Go) Fixed in 0.30.0 Advisory →
Vendor assessments
Timeline
- 2026-10-02 Threatist record created from CVE-2026-40097
- 2026-10-03 Alias added: GHSA-9qq8-cgcv-qmc9
References
Patch 2
Advisory 2
More smallstep Step-ca vulnerabilities
- TI-2026-23665 Step CA: Unauthenticated Certificate Issuance via SCEP UpdateReq (MessageType=18) CVSS 3.1CRITICAL 10.0
Sources
- CVE-2026-40097 · CVE Program
- CVE-2026-40097 · NVD
- FIRST EPSS
- GHSA-9qq8-cgcv-qmc9 · GitHub Advisory Database · CC BY 4.0
- CVE-2026-40097 · Red Hat security data · CC BY 4.0
This product uses the NVD API but is not endorsed or certified by the NVD. Sources and licences